This is about what books I have just finished reading. There will be YA, sci-fi, mystery, fantasy and whatever else catches my eye.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women who helped win World War II

Today's post is on The Girls of
Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women who helped win World War
II by Denise Kiernan. It is 371
pages long including notes and index. It is published by Simon &
Schuster. The cover is a picture of Oak Ridge with women walking
towards the camera. The intended reader is someone who is interested
in women's history, forgotten history, and World War II. There is no
language, no violence, and no sex in this book; any one interested in
the topic can read this. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From
the dust jacket-
At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to
75,000 residents, consuming more electricity than New York City. But
to most of the world, the town did not exist. Thousands of civilians-
many of them young women from small towns across the South- were
recruited to this secret city, enticed by solid wages and the promise
of war-ending work. Kept very much in the dark, few would ever guess
the true nature of the tasks they performed each day in the hulking
factories in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains. That is, until
the end of the war- when Oak Ridge's secret was revealed.

Drawing
on the voices of the women who lived it- women who are now in their
eighties and nineties- The
Girls of Atomic City
rescues a remarkable, forgotten chapter of American history from
obscurity. Denise Kiernan captures the spirit of the times through
these women: their pluck, their desire to contribute, and their
enduring courage. Combining the grand-scale human drama of The
Worst Hard Time
with the intimate biography and often troubling science of The
Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Girls of Atomic City
is a lasting and important addition to our country's history.

Review-
The book does a lot right and wrong. The right is the facts about the
women who lived, worked, and helped win the war. The wrong is the
writing. The story at times was so very interesting but the writing
was so dry. It was an act of discipline to finish this book. Kiernan
takes what should have been interesting history and makes it boring. The
stories of the women are told from the moment they are recruited to
come work until the end of the war. It talked about why they wanted
to help, brothers/fathers in the war, wanting more from life from
marriage and children, or just needing the money. Kiernan writes
about the women who helped discover plutonium and were 'forgotten' by
the Nobel prize society. She talks about the women who cleaned the
offices and other rooms. She does not hold back from the questionable
things that happened to make the bomb happen and she talks about the
human cost of the bomb itself. It should have been wonderful but it
was so boring. The writing was just so dry that I will not read
another thing by her.

I
give this book a Two out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review
and I borrowed this book from my local library.

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Book Review Rating System

5 Stars = This book is a must read
4 Stars = This is a really good book
3 Stars = It was okay
2 Stars = Unsuccessful in coming up to expections
1 Star = Could not get into or finish the book or I was angry with that book that I wrote a strongly worded letter about it.